Where They Lie
by Golden-Mist
Summary: I’ve watched them struggle. Watched helplessly as they fell prey to life and its horrors. I loved them all, though I am their murderer. In the end, what matters? That they are dead? Or that I loved them?


**Where They Lie**

**By Golden-Mist**

Summary: _I've watched them struggle. Watched helplessly as they fell prey to life and its horrors. I loved them all, though I am their murderer. In the end, what matters? That they or dead? Or that I loved them?_

I can remember us, smiling, laughing (well, not Hiei, but he managed a small grin). That was so long ago. My mind aches from even thinking of the eons that have stretched past that I have been alone, uncaring, in my hollow world of souls.

In reality, outside my head, it has only been twenty years since I saw the last of my friends off. Twenty years to sit and think and stay the same.

Everything's the same, except for the loneliness. I open my eyes in the morning and at night they close. Sometimes I wish they would close forever.

But now forever is such a mortal thing. Eternal; a ningen act. True infinity is something incapable of understanding, even if you are living it. It is the past, the present, but not my future, for what is the future if there is nothing to look forward to?

I don't remember being this way, back then. I can't remember these thoughts in my head, so sad, so depressing, so…_hopeless._

But hope is another thing that resides only in the minds of humans and their futile 'future'. Once, with my friends, I was the hopeful one, the one to never give up. Now that they are dead, I suppose it is only suiting that I am desolate and alone.

Once, with my friends…I was happy.

I used to think I would never stop crying. Now I think I will never accept that they are not coming back.

Maybe, though, it is that I will never join them. There is no bright light waiting for me, no outstretched hands or comforting smiles. Never again.

Yukina was the first to die.

It wasn't supposed to go that way. It was such a calm day, so quiet, like the pretty little koorime herself.

It was a simple day. Something normal. I was free from my duties and Yukina and I had wandered downtown, her fiery brother high above, her silent protector.

I can remember her smile, even now. I remember her eyes dancing as we ambled through the shops, searching for the perfect gift for Kurama and Maya's wedding.

We had found this gorgeous mirror, floor to ceiling, all gilded and bronze and at the top, a rose. We had found our gift.

If only…

We stood there, admiring ourselves-mainly me-in that beautiful blasted mirror when the first shot rang out.

Yukina didn't know what was going on. She didn't know what guns really were. So she didn't run.

If only…

"_Yukina, run, we've got to get out of here! Yukina, c'mon! YUKINA!"_

_No…_

Her blood splattered across the mirror. I watched it in horror as Yukina slowly collapsed on me. Bullet to the head. She never had a chance.

I remember healing the wound, crying desperately. I remember Hiei standing over me, trying to drag me away while he himself shook with sobs.

I remember her burial. People crying all around me, while I disappeared into nothing.

Most of all, I remember ferrying Yukina. She was calm and carefree, and she smiled at me with the most heartbroken smile that I nearly died then and there…if I could've. She was the first, almost forty years ago. I will never forget her smile as she died in my arms.

Genkai was next, of natural causes, as she was very old. Then Kuwabara and Shizuru, my humans that I loved so dearly. Keiko was next. She and Maya died in a car accident. I don't think Kurama and Yusuke ever got over it.

I ferried them all.

After Keiko died, Yusuke disappeared, to Makai. I learned later, as I whisked him away to his doom, that he had been killed by Raizen's jealous regent. It was the last time I ever smiled.

Hiei was next. My little koorime. How I miss him. He wasn't killed; he didn't die honorably, not anything like he planned. He died from a broken heart. He loved his sister and his friends and they had all **died**. Kurama had left. We were so alone.

He slipped away within a week of his best friend's departure.

I ferried him, too, away to Hell, where he would spend 15 years before being sentenced to heaven. It's been twenty-two. I'm glad he's not alone anymore.

It was never about me, how much pain I was in. There are so many things more important than the well being of some ferry onna.

So would the world care if I just slipped away? Could I stop the tears? My heart is being ripped out everyday I sit and wait to go…somewhere…_anywhere_…than here.

I'm so tired of being alone. So tired of the ache of my chest. I'm so tired of having to live with it, the lasting image of my friends fading away into the darkness.

I am tired of being a murderer. Tired of watching them suffer and struggle. Tired of falling in love with them and ultimately being they're destroyer.

But it is not up to me to decide the fate of a billion lives. If my friends were here, if they were still alive, if they could feel the same things I did, I _do._

If they were here, could survive, then maybe…so could I.

I love my friends. I loved them dearly and I always will. So in the end what matters?

That I loved them?

Or that they're dead?


End file.
